Republic of Congo Special Report: From a Fatal Fire, Many Questions

Bruno JacquetOssébi, a Franco-Congolese journalist known for outspoken coverage of government corruption in the Republic of Congo, dies after a mysterious fire burns down his house. By Mohamed Keita with reporting by Sarah Turbeaux

Posted April 23, 2009

For most of a late January evening, Bruno JacquetOssébi had been propped in front of a flickering television in his home in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, watching images of the historic inauguration of Barack Obama half a world away. Fire suddenly erupted. Flames sped through the one-story, two-bedroom house shortly after 1 a.m. on January 21, killing Ossébi’s companion and her two boys, ages 8 and 10. The 44-year-old Ossébi, badly burned, died 12 days later, just before a scheduled medical transfer to his native France.

The official Brazzaville fire service report identified the cause of the blaze as a “short circuit,” although Lt. Col. Alphonse Yamboula, commander of the Brazzaville fire rescue center, acknowledged in a CPJ interview that the finding was not based on any forensic investigation.

Numerous questions have arisen. Ossébi was known for his outspoken coverage of alleged government corruption and his support for a lawsuit that seeks to uncover the purportedly extravagant personal holdings of African leaders. Ossébi’s brother, Roland Kouka, told CPJ that family members fear the fire may have been set to retaliate for the journalist’s coverage of alleged official corruption.

In February, police and judicial authorities acknowledged the mounting questions. On February 25, Public Prosecutor Alphonse DinardMokondzi appointed an investigating magistrate to oversee an inquiry.“A man has died in a fire; we want to know whether it was of criminal or accidental origin,” Mokondzi told CPJ. The prosecutor said his office took an interest in the case because Ossébi was a journalist and “there is a lot of suspicion.”

Yet much about the investigation remains unclear, including its expected scope and duration and whether its findings will be made public. The investigation itself is hampered because the remains of the rental home were bulldozed and cleared within days of the fire, destroying potential evidence, according to several local sources.

To prepare this report, CPJ interviewed three dozen of Ossébi’s relatives, friends, and colleagues, some of whom declined to be quoted by name, as well as officials in Congo. CPJ also reviewed the few available official documents in the case, along with personal notes Ossébi sent out of the country.

A Focus on Corruption

Ossébi’s death comes amid the run-up to the 2009 presidential election scheduled for July. Incumbent Denis Sassou Nguesso—who seized office in 1979, lost a 1992 election, and stormed back to power in a bloody civil war five years later—is expected to seek re-election although he has not announced his intentions. Several challengers have launched candidacies, including Mathias Dzon, whose headquarters were targeted by unidentified arsonists in late January. That case remains unsolved,
according to local journalists.

Ossébi had been a correspondent for the France-based
Congolese online newspaper Mwinda since 2006, according to the Web site’s
editors. Mwinda—meaning “Light” after a pro-democracy movement
founded by the late Congolese politician André Milongo—is among a number
of diaspora-run Web sites that closely scrutinize the Congolese government.

A former French colony, the Republic
of Congo lies west of the much larger Democratic Republic of the Congo, across the Congo River. Africa’s fourth-leading oil producer, the
Republic of Congo has scored poorly on Transparency International’s Corruption
Perception Index, an annual assessment of government integrity, ranking 158th
out of 180 countries in 2008.

Just four days before the fire, Ossébi
wrote a story accusing officials with Congo’s national petroleum
authority of improperly negotiating a US$100 billion loan with a French bank,
according to CPJ research. Neither the government nor the officials named in the
story, including Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso, the president’s son, publicly
commented on the story, according to local journalists. Alain Akouala, the government’s minister of communication, declined to
comment when contacted by CPJ.

Ossébi also wrote about an unusual
lawsuit, filed
in France, that questions
how the ruling families of the Republic
of Congo, Equatorial
Guinea, and Gabon
assembled extensive private holdings in France. In addition to writing
pieces for Mwinda, Ossébi published a blog that
regularly described developments in the case. The
plaintiffs—Transparency International and a taxpayer of Gabon—allege the
defendants acquired large portfolios of real estate, cash, and automobiles by
embezzling public funds.

In an interview with
the French dailyLe Figaro,
Congo’s Nguesso denied any impropriety and said the
plaintiffs had “manifest intent to harm.” Gabonese presidential spokesman Raphaël
Ntoutoume declined comment. Calls made
by CPJ to Jeronimo Osa, Equatorial
Guinea’s information minister, went unanswered.

The civil complaint, which seeks damages from the three
ruling families, is being heard by French magistrate Françoise Desset, who will
decide whether the case can go forward.

“Legally speaking, it would be a first,” said Maud Perdriel-Vaissière,
a legal adviser with the French international justice network Sherpa, which is
providing support to the plaintiffs. Perdriel-Vaissière noted that no foreign citizen or group has yet been allowed to sue a
foreign head of state in a French court. A favorable ruling could set a
precedent allowing other foreign citizens to sue their leaders in French courts
over property in France.

Ossébi was “passionate” about the lawsuit and eager to
become a co-plaintiff, according to Bruno Ben Moubamba, a France-based
journalist and activist of Gabonese descent who is tracking the complaint
closely. Transparency International confirmed Ossébi’s interest in becoming a
plaintiff. Enlisting taxpayers from the affected countries can potentially
strengthen the case, said Julien Coll, a top official with Transparency
International France.

Ossébi’s outspoken stance against alleged government
corruption was a bit of a twist, some colleagues said, because his family was
considered part of the ruling elite in Congo. His uncle Henri Lopesis
the country’s ambassador to Paris;
his now-destroyed home was in a neighborhood known as a stronghold of the
ruling party. Ossébi seemed to draw some courage from his family standing. “I’m
not afraid. After all, I have an uncle, the ambassador of Congo in Paris, who
knows very well the origins of the funds that allow all of these people to make
wild expenses,” Ossébi wrote in a December 2008 e-mail to a friend, Serge
Berrebi.

Ossébi did not report getting any
threats in connection with the case, according to family and colleagues. Others
who documented the case in detail or expressed support for it, however, have
been subjected to threats and harassment, CPJ research shows

In
December 2008, Gabonese military intelligence detained for 13 days five
people—Gregory Mintsa, the only individual plaintiff named in the complaint;
journalists Léon Dieudonné Koungou and Gaston Asseko; and civil society leaders
Marc Ona Essangui and Georges Mpagi. The public prosecutor charged the men with
“inciting rebellion against authorities” after they were found with copies of
an open letter that Moubamba published on his blog criticizing Gabonese
President Omar Bongo’s management of the country’s resources. The case is
pending. In March 2008, Gabon’s
state-run National Communications Council suspended Tendance Gabon for
three months after the private newspaper reprinted a report on Bongo’s holdings
in Paris,
according to local news reports. The original story appeared in Le Monde.

In
France,
exiled Congolese dissident Benjamin Toungamani said
a series of telephone threats forced his wife to withdraw her name from the
lawsuit. Toungamani heads a Europe-based exile group called the Congolese Platform against
Corruption and Impunity; his wife is a Congolese taxpayer and, thus, could have
been valuable to the case as a co-plaintiff. Toungamani had discussed the case
in an extensive interview published in Mwinda
just days before the fire.

Coincidentally or not, a fire was reported at Toungamani’s home in the north-central
cityofOrléanson the same night as the blaze that destroyed
Ossébi’s house. Toungamani, who was home at the time but unharmed, said an insurance investigator traced the
origin to a short circuit in a washing
machine. Nonetheless, he
asked police to investigate the matter.

Transparency International has spoken out against the
reprisals. Coll said the organization is working with others to develop ways to
strengthen protections for people who try to combat corruption.

Overall,
the lawsuit has drawn little media attention in the three African countries. In
Equatorial Guinea,
one of the world’s most censored nations,
virtually nothing has been reported. Coverage in the Gabonese press has been
heavily self-censored since last year’s suspension and arrests. In Congo, Ossébi
was one of the few journalists stationed in the country who wrote about the
allegations.

‘Fuzziness’ Surrounds
a Death

In Brazzaville, fire investigators did not
interview Ossébi while he was in the hospital, although the journalist did
recount the circumstances to a friend. Joe Washington Ebina, a
businessman and childhood friend of Ossébi, told CPJ that the journalist said
he was watching the living room television when he heard a commotion in an
adjoining room. When he opened the door, Ossébi told his friend, he was knocked
to the floor and badly burned by flames. Ossébi said he crawled on his hands
and knees out of the home before making a failed effort to return for his
housemates, Ebina recounted. Companion Evelyne Koma and her two children, Lourd
Sagesse Ockoueret and Madide Ockoueret, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Ossébi suffered second-degree burns over 30 percent of his body, according to
one of his doctors.

Initial reports, some from Ossébi’s own family, suggested
the fire was caused by an electrical problem with the television. Ossébi’s
cousin, Ogers, said the journalist told him the television caught fire. Ebina
told CPJ, however, that the journalist never mentioned a short circuit or a
television problem in several conversations before his death.

Because no one has been able to
authoritatively reconstruct the circumstances of the fire, a “real fuzziness”
has hung over the case, said local reporter Arsène Séverin Ngouela, who
frequently encountered Ossébi at Groupe Négoce International, a cyber-café in
downtown Brazzaville.

Fuzziness has also surrounded Ossébi’s death, which occurred
nearly two weeks after the fire during a time when the journalist appeared to
be recovering. “We were laughing. He was talking. I brought him some fruits. He
was eating. For us, he was going to recover,” said Ebina, who visited him
regularly. Ossébi even requested a BlackBerry to check his e-mail, Ebina said.

An attending physician, who spoke to CPJ on condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, confirmed that
Ossébi’s condition was improving and that there were no apparent predictors of
a relapse. The physician, noting that burn victims can suffer sudden reversals
during recovery, said Ossébi went into severe respiratory distress before dying
on February 2.

The death certificate identifies the cause of death as a
“cardio-respiratory arrest,” according to the physician. No autopsy was done.
The death occurred a day before Ossébi was scheduled to be airlifted to a
French hospital for recuperation, according to family members.

“It's sad because [Ossébi] was someone who took part in his
own way in the debate of ideas,” Congolese Communications Minister Akouala told
CPJ in February. Patrick Okamba, director of Brazzaville’s
InternationalPressCenter, remembered Ossébi as an avid
reader of newspapers who enjoyed critiquing their coverage while sipping
espresso at La Mandarine, a cafe in downtown Brazzaville. Patrick Eric Mampouya, a
France-based political blogger and activist told CPJ that Ossébi’s activist
journalism inspired him to start a blog and an e-mail newsletter.

The magistrate appointed to look into the case, Jean Michel Opo, ordered police to form a commission to determine
the cause of the fire. Depending on the findings, Opo told CPJ that he can
recommend the inquiry be pursued further, with the potential of criminal
charges being brought, or he can urge that the case be closed. Asked whether the
findings will be publicly released, Opo told CPJ that the
process was protected by judicial confidentiality.

Questions involving the fatal fire at Ossébi’s home have
gone largely unexamined in the domestic press. Several journalists told CPJ
they fear digging too deeply. Friends say they, too, don’t want to ask many
questions. “I don’t want to talk about
Bruno’s death, particularly on the phone,” one associate told CPJ. Citing fear
of reprisal, he asked not to be identified. “I don’t want it to cost my life.”

Mohamed Keita
is CPJ’s Africa research associate. Sarah
Turbeaux is a consultant for CPJ’s Africa
program.

CPJ’s recommendations to the government of
the Republic of Congo:

Based
on unresolved questions about the fire and Bruno Ossébi’s death, we call on the
Republic of Congo’s public prosecutor to pursue all
leads in investigating the case, including possible criminal motives linked to
Ossébi’s journalism.

In
the interest of transparency, authorities in Republic of Congo
should publicly disclose the results of their investigations into Ossébi’s
death.

CPJ’s recommendations to the government of Gabon:

CPJ
calls on the public prosecutor in Gabon to drop all charges against journalists
Gaston Asseko and Léon Dieudonné Koungou; civil society leaders Marc Ona
Essangui and Georges Mpagi; and Gregory Mintsa. The five are charged with
“inciting rebellion” for allegedly possessing an open letter criticizing
Gabonese President Omar Bongo’s management of the country’s resources.

We
urge the government of Gabon
to halt efforts to censor reports on the misappropriated public assets lawsuit
filed by Transparency International.

CPJ’s recommendations to the governments of
the Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and France:

CPJ
calls on authorities in Republic of Congo, Gabon,
Equatorial Guinea, and France
to thoroughly investigate all threats and attacks made against people who have
described or commented on the misappropriated public assets case.